My theme was post-war experiences. The post-war experiences for the Holocaust survivors were both physically and mentally challenging. They had to deal with the trauma of their reality. They had lost their family members, their communities were destroyed, and they felt displaced. Many people lost their families, and this left them with identity struggles. They did not know who they were and where they belonged. All these survivors had to rebuild their lives, they had to find a new place to live. If their house was not already destroyed, hostile neighbors may have occupied it. They had to move to a different country, and they had to find a new house. My sources contributed by giving great examples of the struggles these Holocaust survivors had and how they could have been solved. The source https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/ states, “Life is not always easy, but you have to keep going. You must never lose hope.” This shows that after the war, people were heartbroken, but no matter the situation, these survivors were willing to rebuild a better life for themselves and whoever they had left in their family. The sources include https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/, https://www.psychologytoday.com/, and https://hmd.org.

The theme of Survival Strategies shows the ways that many people survived the Holocaust. It explains the physical ways that people would revolt and fight back against the nazis. Many people would combine arms and fight back against the nazis with weapons. It also explained the mental ways that people would survive by talking about the many creative ways people would avoid death. Many people would create fake visas or attempt to flee the country to avoid persecution. This theme shows the many ways that people would try to survive during the holocaust. In The Survivors Club, Michael and his family use many creative ways to avoid persecution. His father collects money from the rest of the town to keep the rest of the town safe by paying the nazis. Along with that, while in Auschwitz, Michael's mother had to keep him hidden to make sure he wasn't killed.

Resilience is the adapting or overcoming of a big challenge or adversity, like trauma, tragedy, or stress. Resilience is shown in the sources we found about Holocaust survivors as it gave them a will to survive because of resilience, and it gave them a good outlook at life because of the harsh conditions that they had to go through. Like the Bornstein's story their family members pushed themselves to the limits or in face of danger and breaking rules to keep their family safe, like in the book Survivors Club where Michael's mother hid him under her bed so he was safe even though he wasn't allowed in the women's bunk.

Surviving wasn't an easy task during the Holocaust; millions of people were killed, but there were a lot of different survival strategies that people used to better their chances of living to the end of the war. Different strategies include hiding in the toilets, sewing money into clothes, hiding children in adult bunks, smuggling food, leaving the country, and going into hiding (such as hiding in a non-Jewish household or hiding in a basement, attic, etc.) People would try to trade items for food, sneak food, or get food from workers and share small portions. Some people tried to find spots near the center of a barrack that had some warmth. They would stay quiet in order to avoid unwanted attention from guards, getting a useful job helped gain protection and increased the chance of living longer. Building relationships with one another was really important, and while some people put themselves first, there was a low chance of making it out of the war without help from others. Within the camps, friendship could have been the difference between life and death. The reason a group of women survived from infection was because of a friend urging them to use their own urine as a disinfectant on their own infected, pus-filled wounds on their fingers, which ended up working. Having people to rely on in the camps would help in a lot of serious situations, like the death marches. There were a couple survivors that were bonded with each other and were able to come up with a system where they periodically exchanged places, one out of the group would switch to be the person in the middle so they could catch a few moments of sleep while walking, because the person in the middle would be dragged along by the others and not fall down, resulting in them being able to rest but not be shot by German guards. While friendship was important, you needed a lot more to be able to survive the harsh conditions in concentration camps. Children in Auschwitz would often use their small size to smuggle food, medicine, and supplies from outside. Most of the children only survived because they went into hiding, from changing their identity to physically concealing themselves from the outside world, were all measures to stay safe. When it came to staying alive people's first thought is escape, but that was a very hard option which oftentimes ended in getting killed, but there were small ways of resistance such as a lot of different Judenrats would help people to revolt against Nazi soldiers inside of ghettos. There was also a system of underground workings that would help give out true information and not spread propaganda. The underground workings would help Jewish people with a lot of stuff, such as finding places for them to hide out during the war. There are a lot of different sources that give this information. One of these “Survivors Club”, which is a firsthand account from Michael Bornstein, who is one of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz. The book goes into detail about many different things he and his family had to do to survive, such as his mother smuggling food into the camp and keeping him in the women's barracks. https://mjhnyc.org/blog/the-remarkable-power-of-friendship/ tells the story of a female survivor explaining how she wouldn't have survived without the help of others. She talks about the ways she tried to help keep other girls alive, specifically with the use of her suggestion to use urine as a disinfectant. Encyclopedia.ushmm.org talks about the many different lengths that children had to go in order to survive. It explains many different survival methods they used and how they were effective such as children using a small size to smuggle food and supplies into ghettos and adopting fake identities to avoid being detected by Nazi soldiers. All the different sources really explain the different survival tactics and tell the reader what different survivors had to go through in order to make it out of the war. There was a lot of the Holocaust that is not talked about, survival methods are one of those topics that are not talked about in detail. But with the research from these sources, the reader is clearly able to understand and learn about the different ways people stayed alive. Some of the things that people had to do in order to live were horrific and truly devastating, so learning about that and understanding the lengths people went to really shows others the depth of the Holocaust. Understanding the different methods gives people the ability to have even more respect for Holocaust Survivors.

The chosen theme was life at camp. Life at camp was not easy and very fatal. After finding key sources and sites to research more about the brutal life at camp, it shows what Jews went through. Life at the camps was horrible, and everything was quite unsanitary. Living conditions were very hard to even endure. Prisoners wore the same baggy clothes the whole time they were there. Sickness spread very easily, and many died from diseases. This would strongly affect mental and physical health. The hard labor physically broke people. Also, the lack of food starved people and caused death. Mentally, people got PTSD after everything they went through. Bathrooms were disgusting, and they would have to use the bathroom in small holes. Also, Jews slept on wood planks with up to 4 people, which meant no sleeping room. Site 1 “Majdenek.eu” states, “The barracks had no sewage system. Until the spring of 1943, they lacked even the most basic sanitation. The lack of water made it impossible for the prisoners to wash themselves or to clean their clothes or underwear. The prisoners were not allowed to keep any cleaning items. Due to the lack of sanitary installations, during the day, completely unshielded sewage pits had to be used as field latrines” This site helped contribute to the understanding of the theme because it showed truly how unsanitary the camps were. Prisoners couldn't even clean themselves, which made sickness spread very easily. Site 2 “auschwitz.org” records, “During the first several months, the prisoners’ rooms had neither beds nor any other furniture. Prisoners slept on straw-stuffed mattresses laid on the floor." This site also contributed to the theme of the living conditions because it adds another reason of why living conditions were so substandard. In the first few months, there weren't even beds to sleep on, which meant prisoners had to sleep on hard floors. We should all remember the Holocaust because of the terrible things Jews and other people had to go through. Nobody could've gone through something quite as bad as the holocaust, so we should never take anything for granted. Remembering the Holocaust is very important because we can learn from the past to not commit these atrocities again.

(shaf)